


Merely Exists

by warsfeil



Category: X/1999
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-06
Updated: 2012-06-06
Packaged: 2017-11-07 01:44:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/425538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warsfeil/pseuds/warsfeil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Subaru buys a shirt. It's not a wise decision.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Merely Exists

The shirt was an impulsive buy. Subaru wasn't intending to buy a shirt at all. He wasn't intending to go _shopping_. It happened with a spontaneity that he had believed had died with Hokuto years ago. 

It wasn't much. It was just a normal, black shirt. It was probably made of some nice, expensive fabric that Subaru couldn't grasp the intricacies of. It was soft against his skin, warm against the chill air that permeated winter nights in Tokyo, and lacked all the color that he had worn before. It felt wrong to wear the bright colors he had when she was around when she was gone. The only thing that wasn't bland and uninteresting about the shirt was the buckle in the front. 

The shirt was purchased at the small clothing store at the end of the street, wrapped up and placed in an innocent plastic bag, and Subaru skipped stopping by the corner store to get the bento he'd ventured for in the beginning. Instead, he went home (if he could call anything home, anymore), the room as uninteresting as the shirt. There were no dirty dishes in the sink. No trash in the bin waiting to be taken out. It could be called clean, in polite company. Spartan, if you were a little more blunt. If you were honest, it looked like no one lived there. It felt like there was no one living there.

He didn't think about the shirt again until a few days later. It went on the top of the closet, where it should have been, and he had other shirts to wear, other things to do. Fashion had never been a priority, so something as simple as a shirt certainly wasn't going to occupy his mind. There was no reason for it. Was there?

The question answered itself. He hadn't even asked it, but he got the answer all the same. He was in Shinjuku, heading to the house of a woman who was having problems with the ghost of her neighbor consistently harassing her. It was almost habit, really, habit to walk without fully paying attention to much besides the address in his mind. His eyes wandered, and for as much as he kept his attention focused in case he should catch a glimpse of a man with one white eye, the sound of that familiar voice-- he didn't expect to find Seishirou. Not here. 

Perhaps because of his focus on Seishirou, his focus on the address of the woman's house and his complete lack of interest in the normal goings-on of the area, he'd forgotten. He'd forgotten this street, forgotten where he was and what it meant. He hadn't mean to turn here. He shouldn't have turned here.

Subaru looked at the building in front of him and swallowed around the lump in his throat. It wasn't a veterinary clinic anymore. Subaru wasn't quite sure what it was-- his eyes weren't quite focusing in on the sign-- and he didn't care. He could still smell the inside, the smell of cleaning agents doing nothing to overwhelm the normal smell of cats and dogs, of fur and litter. He could hear the plaintive, complaining meows and upset barks from the kennel-- he could still hear _them._

_"I **am** just an ordinary veterinarian."_

_"C'mon, Subaru! He wants to **take** you there!"_

It was like ripping open an old wound. No-- that wasn't accurate. It was like the wound had never really closed over in the first place. He took a quiet, shuddering breath, his eyes losing focus on the building in front of him that no longer declared itself as the Sakurazuka Veterinary Hospital. He had work to do. He had people to help.

It took strength for him to turn and walk away, away from the building (the building that wasn't, not anymore, the building that shouldn't mean so much and yet somehow still did.) His fists were clenched harder than he realized, and he noticed dully that his nails had started digging far enough into his palms to draw blood. His vision swirled for a second as he processed the lack of the gloves on his hands, their absence still, _still_ something he wasn't used to, tied to the memory that he didn't want to keep and couldn't ever avoid. 

_"Seeing you suffering like this... I feel nothing."_

Subaru moved forward, ignoring the sound of the voice he could still hear in his mind, in his ears. It wouldn't do any good to try to block it out. He could press his hands down on his ears so hard that he couldn't hear the cars driving by on the street, couldn't hear the children running down the sidewalk, and he would still be able to hear that voice.

_Seishirou-san..._

He was fifteen minutes late to his appointment with Watanabe-san. The neighbor's ghost was easy to send on, and Subaru was grateful for that. He was seeing the world with an overlay of sakura, and it was hard to concentrate when he kept seeing something pink fall out of the corner of his eye.

-

Getting home that night was an exercise in futility. Every step he took echoed like there was nothing but blackness around him, every breath he took brought the smell of sakura to his nose. It was strong enough to taste, strong enough that it took ever bit of willpower in him not to stop and look around.

This was the Sakurazukamori's power. Seishirou wasn't anywhere near him, Subaru knew that, but Subaru's mind was still so thoroughly fixated on the man that he might as well have been. 

Subaru wished, not for the first time, that Seishirou had been successful in killing him. That Hokuto was still alive. That he'd never _met_ Seishirou. That maybe, maybe, Seishirou would still kill him, instead of condemning him to continue living this half-life, looking around every corner for the assassin, dreams filled with blood and sakura and her voice. 

He bathed with water that was entirely too hot, hot enough that the thin, scraggly towel he wrapped around himself was uncomfortable. It did little to clear his mind, the heat and steam only serving to cloud everything further. He sat on the chair, the cold air hitting his overheated skin like a thousand needles, and didn't look up until the remnants of his bath had dried on his skin or sunk into the fibers of the towel.

The shirt was an afterthought. 

It was still neatly folded in the top of the closet. He hung his towel up and had been intending to grab drawstring pants and little else. Something to sleep in, or do what he could to imitate sleep, these days. He took out the shirt instead. He frowned, slightly, the buckle on the neck of the shirt disturbing him more, now that he looked at it. Why had he even bought it? He didn't need it; it was more expensive than a plain shirt, and it wasn't something that he really needed to wear. Were buckles something that Hokuto had liked? He couldn't remember anymore. Most of her fashion advice had flown in one ear and then out the other, leaving and being replaced by more spells and chants and things he deemed more important, no matter how hard he tried to remember what purple clashed with and if he was supposed to tuck his jeans into his shoes or not. He'd taken her presence for granted. She'd always be there to tell him what to wear.

He slipped the shirt on and stepped over to the mirror. He still saw her, when he looked, even after his hair cut, even after trying so hard not to look like her anymore. 

It was thankfully, painfully easy to think of what she would say about the shirt. 

_"Subaru! I **told** you not to wear black so often-- you need more color! Here, if you're going to insist on wearing black, you should at least wear another color with it. Some red, maybe, or green! No, that would just overpower your eyes, and we need to bring them out... Oh! You could pair it with a white coat! The contrast would be nice, though I still think it should have more color. Maybe some gold...?"_

He looked away from the mirror before he started trying to talk back again, try to reply to her. He'd had too many conversations with her after her death, too many talks that should have been one sided but for the fact that he could still hear her talking to him. Still, after all this time.

He could almost hear Seishirou's opinion on the matter, too. No, that was a lie. There was no _almost_ about it. He could hear the man using that innocent tone of the veterinarian, teasing and playful.

_"You should listen to your sister, Subaru-kun! It wouldn't do to ignore the advice of someone so skilled at fashion."_

_"See, Subaru? Sei-chan wants you to look your best! You can't just go around in black all the time when you have such a charming man after you!"_

"Neesan--" The flush hit his face before he even fully processed it, the word slipping past his lips and breaking the moment, breaking the silence and the scene he'd played out in his mind. He was still alone in his room. There was no whimsically dressed twin sister teasing him, no friendly veterinarian in a ridiculous salmon pink suit playing a part entirely too well. He was alone. 

The flush only deepened. Was he so desperate that he had to pretend they were still alive? That he had to pretend things were still like that? They weren't. They never would be again. He needed to go after Seishirou, he needed to find him, to get stronger, to prove that he was a challenge. He had to. This was reality. 

He could still hear _that_ Seishirou-san, too. He didn't know what _that_ Seishirou would say about the shirt-- would he even notice? Would he even care? He didn't care about Subaru. Subaru was the same as the shirt, so Seishirou might not even mention it. He could use it against him, he thought.

_"Hokuto-chan would be so pleased to see you remember her fashion advice, but I can't imagine she would be thrilled to see you dressing so darkly, Subaru-kun."_

Subaru didn't want to keep hearing this. 

_"Are you that adverse to color? It seems like such a drastic change!"_

He didn't want to hear any of this. He clamped his hands down over his ears, trying to block out the imagined voice. It didn't work. He knew it wouldn't work. 

_"You're so cute, Subaru-kun."_

" **No**!" 

The sound broke the silence, but not the spell. Not the imagined scene in front of him. He could still feel Seishirou-san near him, still hear him, still _smell_ him, sakura and Mild Seven Selects and animals and antiseptic. He could still feel the throbbing in his arm when Seishirou had broken it, hear his ribs crack underneath him and feel the Sakura as she twined around him, every bit hungry and every bit ruthless. 

There was no point in imagining the veterinarian anymore. Seishirou-san-- Seishirou-- was an assassin, was the Sakurazukamori... but Subaru could still hear that velvet voice in his ears, the tone changed from innocence to cold, dispassionate cruelty. Remembering it still brought a shiver down his spine, a dark set of emotions that Subaru tried to deny were there, did his best not to name. 

_"You're just an object, which merely exists."_

The worst part was that he still _wanted_ to hear that voice. He hated it, hated those words, but longed for it all the same. He couldn't get rid of the ache in his heart that was centered around Seishirou, independent of Hokuto. 

If Hokuto had never been killed... 

If Subaru had gone to Seishirou himself, instead... 

He imagined that, instead. He imagined presenting himself to the man, a coward looking for a way out. Would Seishirou have accepted it? How would he have done it? Subaru's hand touched his own wrist, almost hesitantly, before moving down to the backs of his hands and tracing the too-familiar star pattern. No... Seishirou-san wouldn't have bothered with that, Subaru didn't think. Why would he, when they both already knew that Subaru was his prey?

Subaru didn't want to keep thinking about this. Sliding down to sit on the floor, against the wall, he told himself he didn't want to keep thinking about this, but he kept going, anyway, kept pressing onwards with a shamefully familiar one-mindedness, playing out a scenario within his own mind that he wanted to pass-- and doubted. He let one hand travel down to roughly cup himself. He'd done this before, he knew where this was going. If he did it now, maybe, _maybe_ he wouldn't dream about it tonight, instead, maybe he wouldn't wake up curled onto his side with a pointed stain declaring things that he wished he could deny.

_"You're so cute, Subaru-kun."_

There wasn't anything cute about presenting yourself to be killed, about _wanting_ to be killed, Subaru didn't think. There wasn't anything cute about killing, but there was something desperately arousing about the idea of Seishirou-san moving forward. He wouldn't hesitate like Subaru always did. He'd stride with that easy, careless grace that he was so good at, take Subaru's chin and proclaim him cute. Subaru could hear it in his ears, repeating on a loop that made him shudder hard against his hand, against the sound. 

He didn't want to be cute, but what Subaru wanted mattered very little to the assassin. Seishirou-san could prove it as easily as he had before, and the phantom pain that sparked through Subaru's arm as he imagined (remembered) the man doing so made him gasp, the noise too loud against the silence. He hunched his shoulder forward as he clenched his eyes shut, holding on tight to the voice in his ears and the memory (fantasy) he let play out inside of his head. His hand moved on his cock almost as an afterthought even at it's frantic pace. That was a feeling he would never know, could never imagine from Seishirou-san-- out of the furthest realm of possibility, save for his dreams. So he continued to only think about his death, the fulfillment of a bet as it should have happened so many years ago.

The sakura's branches were rough. Even through the shirt he was wearing now, the soft, warm fabric, he knew he'd be capable of feeling that roughness, even if the tree didn't shred his clothing. If it did... there wouldn't be splinters, of course, no traces of the tree, but there would be the thick red scratches that would lay across his arms, his wrists, his legs, his abdomen. Subaru's spare hand left faint scratches across his skin, automatically retraching the pattern the tree would have left on his body. Everywhere, restrained, in front of Seishirou-san's gaze, the one-eyed smile that he knew would be ever present.

Subaru could (would) make quiet, pained noises, and Seishirou-san wouldn't care enough to pull out a scream. He would simply watch as the tree held Subaru up in place, bound. Seishirou-san would know as well as Subaru did that if Subaru really wanted to, really tried, he would be capable of escaping, be capable of putting up a fight, but he wouldn't. Subaru wouldn't. He wanted this, and Seishirou-san would know it. 

_"Farewell."_

The final details: Seishirou-san's hand holding his head in place, even through the grasp of the sakura's branches. Subaru wrapped his hand in the front of the shirt, drawing the buckle closed and tighter, imagining hard wood instead of soft fabric, of bloody hands instead of his own.

"Ngh--"

He came hard across his own hand, nearly doubled over, before he could imagine the Sakurazukamori's posed hand coming to rest where it should have inside of his chest. Leaving the wound that Subaru had felt for years present in reality.

Subaru shivered against the air, even with the shirt, then. He couldn't smell the sakura over the smell of his own come, couldn't feel anything aside from a lingering light-headed dizziness that came from orgasm and oxygen deprivation. He hated himself more than he had ever hated Seishirou, right then, hated that after all of this, he _couldn't_ hate Seishirou. 

He was going to need another shower. There wouldn't be enough hot water yet. There wouldn't be enough hot water in the world. 

Subaru curled his bare knees to his chest and let out a sob. His tears broke the silence of the room, and he let himself break down, desperately clinging to himself when he wanted so much to be able to hold on to someone else, instead. He sat there until the tears stopped, until the water was warm again, until he had the strength to stand back up.

The second shower was as hot as the first, and when Subaru got back out, he laid the shirt on the chair to wear in the morning.


End file.
